CentOS certification error

svzard · 05-06-2008, 12:13 AM

Hi all,
As I did not find a dedicated CentOS forum here in LQ, and since its nothing but an unbranded RHEL, I'm posting CentOS issue here. Please move it to appropriate forum if you think otherwise.

I usually get certification error message when I try to access CentOS website. The below is what I got in firefox this time. What's the issue? CentOS is one of the respected distros. How should I take this?

Code:

Secure Connection Failed

www.centos.org uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is not trusted.
(Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer)

    * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.
    * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

Regards,
SV

raskin · 05-06-2008, 01:02 AM

First, it is not specific to any installed distribution, so it would better go somewhere in Software section than in Linux->Distributions->*

www.centos.org uses a CAcert (cacert.org) certificates. These certificates are free and are reasonably respected. You can visit cacert.org and install their root certificate; or you can simply add an exception to trust CAcert-signed certificate CentOS site is using. In both cases you need to trust your Internet uplink not to change data in transit (you do not need to trust it not to look at your communications, though).

Earlier Firefox just displayed a dialog box that urged user to inspect certificate and answer if it should be trusted, but they decided to give error page just to ofrce user to find out what SSL actually is.. CAcert Root certificate is not included in Firefox because of discussions if CAcert verification policy is robust enough. Look at http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=19 for details of "who gets which certificate"; generally, if a site is using 24-month CAcert SSL certificate, its administration disclosed their verifiable identities.

svzard · 05-06-2008, 08:28 AM

So, it essentially means we can trust the certificate. I've installed CentOS on my system
and am using it to prepare for RHCE. So, just wanted to know how secure it is. Fine, I'll
add the certification to trusted list...